Hangar Talk January 2016

Happy New Year! By Tom Chalmers

IT’S A New Year and time for a little humour, something old and something new. The something old is really old, but is always good for a laugh, but, at the same time, has deeprooted advice for pilots– military, airline, corporate and general aviation types.

The something “new” is fairly recent or alternatively, in the future, depending on how you read it.

The announcement of Scampton Air Show in the UK says that the show will be held on 09‐10 September 2017, but tickets will go on sale tomorrow (on 10 November) for the “new Lincolnshire Air Show”, the day their new website was launched. The release was recalled about an hour later followed by a new one which reveals that there is, in fact, only one air show involved, that of Scampton , which, incidentally, is home to the Red Arrows and which will be held next September.

So much for the “new”. The “old” is much more extensive and is a collection of “Declassified Military Secrets”. To start with, here’s a quote from the late Bob Hoover, military, test, civilian and air show ace pilot: “If you are faced with a forced landing, fly the thing as far into the crash as possible…”

And here’s one from Ernest Gann, author and aviator: “If an airplane is still in one piece, don’t cheat on it, fly the bastard down…

A sign above a control tower door reads: “What is the similarity between an air traffic controller and a pilot? If the pilot screws up, the pilot dies, and if the ATC screws up, the pilot stilldies….”

“A good landing,” reads a sign on the wall of the Columbus Air Force Base, (MS 1976) “is one you can walk away from, but a great landing is when you can reuse the ‘plane…”

This is a really old one – from the 1930s and originates from the then US Army Air Corps: “There are bold pilots and there are old pilots, but there are few old, bold pilots.”

Another one comes from a sign in the pilots’ room of a USAAF base in World War II. It is headed: Basic Flying Rules, and reads: “Try to stay in the middle of the air. Do not go near the edges of it. The edges can be recognised by the appearance of ground, buildings, sea and trees. It is much more difficult to fly there.”